Hello and welcome to Needless Jargon

Hello and welcome to the first post in my blog, Needless Jargon! My name is John, and I am the author of the words you’re reading. I am just getting started, as you can probably see. There is not a lot of content here right now, and my writing is pretty rusty being out of practice for a while. No worries, though. After a few repetitions of writing and revising and rewriting, the rusty parts of my brain will get moving and I’ll remember how to string coherent sentences together once again.

I have to admit I started this blog with less planning than I should have done. I didn’t consider many important things that I think would have been useful to think of and decide on before writing my first post, but I didn’t. It’s not the end of the world that I did not do this, and I will press on and write while figuring those details out. Onward we go.

I am a project manager in my daytime job. While I don’t necessarily intend to write only about what I do for a living, I thought it would be nice to explain one of the things that influences how I think about things. I’ve not always been a project manager during my career. Before I turned to the dark side, I spent about fourteen years in procurement on either the execution or compliance side. Both of these career paths are in the federal space, and the federal space is where I’ve been for all of my career.

I have an undergraduate degree in the Japanese language. This is somewhat unconventional for a person who works in an engineering organization, but the skills I developed earning this degree have proven their worth time and time again in the years since I’ve graduated. I believe the study of any second language, especially a language so foreign to English like the Japanese, is an exceedingly efficient way to master abstract complex problem solving. It has the added benefit of becoming a bit more comfortable in supremely uncomfortable situations where it seems like nothing you say is understood by anyone in the room.

My graduate degree is a Master of Business Administration, or an MBA. While the soft skills I developed during my time studying Japanese were highly beneficial, I needed something a bit more concrete that I could use to help boost my credibility in the organization. Since I worked primarily in the business-related field, something that showed a basic mastery of that profession seemed a good way to show I knew what I was talking about.

I typically fall into the trap Americans normally do and that is to make everything about their job. I am getting better at remembering the human side of things as I get further along in my life’s journey, but I still grapple with this habit. After separating from the military to go to college and earn my Japanese degree, it took me almost a full year to partially separate my mind from the rigors of a military career. My decision to attend school again to pursue an MBA was primarily driven by the pandemic and the ubiquity of working from home and remote classes. For two years, from 2021 to 2023, I focused on completing my degree and almost nothing else. Diving so deep into a field of study, both in Japanese and in business, has permanently shaped the way I think about things.

Whether it’s project management or procurement in the federal space, the Japanese culture or its language, the fundamentals of business to the advanced practices of developing and executing corporate strategy, or experiences gained from having spent eight years enlisted in the US Air Force, I probably have something to say about it.

When I’m not working, I like regular things like reading books, playing video games, and training with kettlebells. I am not a very competitive person, so things that require a competitive spirit are things that I’m likely unfamiliar with. Sports, for example, is one topic I am almost entirely unable to hold a conversation on. I’ll get more into that in my next post.

Until next time. Chop wood, carry water.